The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 51

The LMDC continues sniping at Gov. Pataki for canning the IFC.

Officials of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. yesterday lashed out at last week's decision by Gov. Pataki to yank the International Freedom Center from Ground Zero.
The move, they said, undermines their ability to rebuild the World Trade Center site.

"There is no question that the LMDC has been deeply wounded here," Roland Betts said at a meeting in which all but one of his fellow board members disapproved of the IFC's removal.

Betts acknowledged, however, that the LMDC shared some of the blame for failing to defend a project that it had already approved.

Maybe they need to realize that they failed to realize just how flawed a project they approved and the Governor saved them from themselves. The IFC was a flawed project, and including a cultural component in the WTC rebuilding was a reach for urban planners who envisioned more cultural centers in lower Manhattan.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is running favorable news stories about Richard Tofel, who was the head of the now-defunct, International Freedom Center.

Short-term political correctness has, he fears, snuffed out long-term vision. Instead of a memorial site that "stands the test of time" and offers a continuing meditation on freedom's oft-threatened lifeline, there will be a 9/11 dead zone with 9/11 in perpetual focus. Reverent, yes. Forever relevant? He suspects not.

So Mr. Tofel, president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Center, which last week went from nascence to obsolescence in the space of a few sentences from Gov. George E. Pataki, can be forgiven his glum mood.

"Basically what happened here is a lack of political will," says Mr. Tofel. He leaves it to others to label Mr. Pataki, once a cheerleader for the Freedom Center, a turncoat for bowing to the wishes of relatives of 9/11 victims who had denounced it as distracting and detrimental to the memory of lost loved ones. "There was a judgment made as to how best to redevelop the site and neighborhood, and then, the judgment got reversed. We fit in with the original plan, and not only fit in, but helped give life to the original concept of what this place was about."

I'm sorry, but Tofel has it all wrong. The political will was so muddled at the beginning of the process that it didn't realize that the public didn't want an interpretation of what happened at the World Trade Center on 9/11 or how that relates to events or issues globally.

The public demands that we see 9/11 for what it was and what it is at the World Trade Center for all time - a heinous terrorist attack conducted by Islamic terrorists who hate everything about the United States.

The IFC was a failed idea that should never have been included in the project, and the political will finally took hold after outcry from all quarters. The fact that Tofel thinks the IFC fit in with the original plan suggests that the problem lay with the original Daniel Libeskind master plan as well, which is something that we've been seeing for quite some time.

The long term vision is that the memorial and museum will not be sullied by someone whose views of the US and American actions at home and overseas are not only highly critical but downright anti-American. The programs, backers, and individuals involved with the IFC and the Drawing Center were a who's who of anti-American thought. They celebrated anti-Americanism and sought to bring that view to the one place where it is least accepted; Ground Zero.

Also, in a development in the trial on the 1993 WTC bombing, a former Port Authority executive testified that the Port Authority rejected recommendations to tighten security in the underground garage because it would be costly and inconvenient.

The recommendation came eight years before terrorists set off a car bomb in the garage in 1993, killing six and injuring more than 1,000.

A call to end public parking in the garage was included in a security report by PA executive Edward O'Sullivan, who found that the Twin Towers were an "attractive terrorist target."

Once again, the results of cost/benefit analysis in security issues rears its ugly head.

What price are we willing to pay for increased security, or the veneer of increased security and safety?

UPDATE:
The NY Post editorial page points out why the LMDC directors are miffed at the Gov, particularly Ronald Betts. Betts is Tofel's business partner. Everyone is connected to everyone else and those relationships affected the judgment of the group as a whole to make the right decisions. In fact, the LMDC has been a failure in the Post's opinion given that there has been no tangible permanent redevelopment at Ground Zero in the four years since the attacks. They call for the LMDC board to resign because of the inability to get anything done.

In fact, everything that has been done thus far was done despite the LMDC - 7 WTC and the temporary PATH station were built outside the LMDC strictures. New Orleans and the federal government better look at this closely, because New Orleans is going down the same path - putting together a panel to oversee redevelopment of the city, and the interests of the proposed New Orleans redevelopment panel aren't really in step with what the city needs.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center.